Where did Smart ELT and S.M.A.R.T. come From?

 The Smart ELT teaching approach came out of many years of teaching and teaching training. Starting with my original training back in 2000, it evolved over time into the approach that it is today.

 In the Beginning: P.P.P Approach

 When I first arrived in Japan in May 2000, I was working for one of the big English conversation schools. In our training we were introduced to the P.P.P. or Present, Practice, Produce method of teaching. The approach to lesson planning was perfect for me as a new teacher and it fit really well with the students I was teaching. The company also provided comprehensive lesson plans for each of their texts, each implementing the P.P.P. method. The idea was very simple; present the day’s target language; practice it; have the students produce it. A nice lesson flow moving from controlled and structured activities to less controlled and freer activities.  

A New Direction: Smart ELT

From April 2003, after a year teaching in various junior high schools, I took on the position of ALT Director at a dispatch company. The company had only started dispatching ALTs that year, so it was my job to set up the training program and support materials for new ALTs.
In the beginning, I continued with the P.P.P. method, as I’d found the underlying principles behind it had worked well for me, even teaching large classes. I had good feedback from the teachers and they were all able to settle into their schools quickly and felt confident with their lesson planning and teaching.
The following year, I was in charge of setting up a seminar for Japanese junior high school English teachers. We called the seminar J.E.T.S. (Junior High School English teachers Seminar). The seminar was a great success, but I began to notice something about the terms used in P.P.P. that lead to some confusion.

New Terms for Smart ELT

Activate (Present)

When introducing new language, many teachers took the term ‘Present’ to mean literally that, “Today we are going to study the present continuous.” for saving time, this can be an except able approach, but I have found that going straight to a grammatical term, or straight to a Japanese translation of the target language can put up crutches at the outset that become barriers to students later acquisition of the target material.
I found a better way of thinking about it was to first, activate the language through the means of flashcards, gestures or examples and then when possible, elicit as much of the target language as possible from the students by tapping into their previous knowledge.
From this idea ‘Motivate’ and ‘Activate’ became two of the most important parts of the lesson. Using these terms also showed much better results when I used them in future seminars.

Reinforce (Practice)

Very similar to practice, but I prefer ‘reinforce’ because it has a stronger sense about it. You practice a sport, but the practice might be to either maintain or improve your level. Reinforce implies making something stronger, which is closer to what we hope to achieve.

Test (Produce)

I still like the idea of the students producing the language, but I found a similar problem that I came across with ‘Present’. The end goal of our lesson is to have the students comfortable producing the language in some form. In an Oral Communication class, this would usually be speaking, but in a regular English class, testing can take many forms. The testing doesn’t always have to be a role play or game. I found that the target language, the level of the class, the motivations of the students and the overall personality of the class were big factors in deciding the type of activity I wished to use. Hence, in the S.M.A.R.T. approach, ‘test’ refers to any activity that check’s whether students have achieved the goals set out at the beginning of the class. Were they able to use the target language?

Put all this together, and you have ‘Smart’ language teaching.

THE SMART APPROACH

Start

Start the class – let students know it’s their English lesson 

Let the students know that this is their English class. This could be as simple as doing your greetings in English and taking attendance. You could also have a quickfire Q&A session asking about the weather, day, date, etc. consistency is important as we need to put the students back into ‘English class’ mode.

Motivate

Motivate the students. Get them ready to learn 

Having a simple review game or short but dynamic vocabulary exercise gets the students’ minds prepared and motivated to study English. A mistake made at this point would be just to focus on getting the students energized. Energized is good, but are they energized to study or to play games? We still want students to study and be prepared to work hard to understand and process English. Also, make sure this activity is related to the day’s lesson target. All too often, warm-up games can be a little unrelated. This leads to difficult transitions between activities.

Activate

Activate the lesson’s target language 

Using some of the vocabulary used in the previous activity, now it’s time to ‘activate’ the target language for the day’s lesson. Activating the language doesn’t mean giving the students the target in their first language then telling them what it is in English. To activate language means building up an image of the particular target language in the students’ minds, hopefully, independent of their first language. A much stronger connection can be made and much better fluency achieved if students have an association of English separate from their first language. Activation can be as simple as using flashcards and gestures to elicit and drill the target language.

Reinforce

Reinforce the target language 

Once the students understand the concepts, the ideas need to be reinforced with practice activities. Practice activities vary from structured and assisted to unstructured a freer. A structured example might be filling in gaps with the correct verb structure. Freer practice could be using the target language to express your own ideas and experiences.

Test

Test the students’ ability to use the target language 

At the end of the lesson, it is important to test whether students have been able to acquire the language of the lesson or at least a good understanding of it. Direct testing could come in the form of a quiz, where indirect testing could be through interviews and role-plays. In each case, you can make your lesson SMARTER by then Evaluating the students and Reinforcing as required.

Again, this is not a magic method for teaching English, it is just an approach. Each lesson plan should be fluid and designed based on the target and the needs that target presents. Keeping each of the SMART steps in mind and with them an image of the kind of activities you choose at each stage, lesson planning will become a lot quicker, smoother, more organized and easier for students to follow.